Saturday, September 29, 2007

Nessie Faithful Fear Monster Is Dead


She has played a highly lucrative game of Highland hide-and-seek for decades, but fears are rising that Scotland's most elusive resident may be no more.

The publication of shadowy photographs in the 1930s apparently showing a dinosaur-like creature at large in Loch Ness sparked a media frenzy that lasted for the rest of the century.

However, sightings of Nessie have plummeted in recent years, giving rise to fears that the long-necked Caledonian leviathan is either dead or ailing.

There have been only two reported sightings so far this year and there were only three in 2006. A decade ago the numbers were consistently in the high teens.

"It has become a potential crisis," admitted Mikko Takala, a founder member of the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club.

Even the American scientist Dr Robert Rines, who captured the famous 'flipper' image of Nessie in 1974, believes the monster is unlikely to have survived.

"There is very little vegetation left in the loch for creatures to eat," he said.

"Everything is going against these things still being there."

Steve Feltham, 44, who has spent 16 years watching the loch from a converted mobile library on its southern shore, believes there were once as many as 30 mysterious creatures in the loch, but that they are gradually dying off because of old age.

"In the heyday of the sightings, back in the Sixties and Seventies, there were probably 20 or 30 of these animals, but I believe that we're now down to the last half dozen," he said.

Nessie tourism brings in an estimated £6m a year for the economy of the Highlands. But without the publicity created by sightings, the tourist industry faces an uncertain future.

In the era of digital cameras, camera-phones and webcams, it is perhaps surprising that there have not been more reported sightings in recent years.

Of the two reported sightings this year, one was in March when an English holidaymaker saw what he thought was a head and fin in the loch below Urquhart Castle, while the other was in May, when a Yorkshireman captured video footage of what looked like a jet-black shape moving slowly beneath the surface. Although initially viewed as promising, experts now believe it was the result of a sustained draft of wind blowing from the surrounding hills.


Doctors Baffled By Boy Who Sprouts 'Leaves'

Doctors are predictably baffled by what would appear to be a medical mystery. Over the last three days, assorted plant leaves and seeds have been continuously popping out from one of the ears of Aman Deep, a 12-year old boy in Faridabad. The sixth standard student has been equally stunned - his ear has "delivered" more than hundred leaves.

ENT specialists, and the radiologists who performed a high-resolution CT Scan of the boy's skull on Friday, looked clueless after the test as they sought to find an explanation. The boy's ear poured out two leaves even during the investigation at the diagnostic center here. As the doctors tried to figure out the mystery, others are already attributing it to superstition and something that was beyond the world of medicine and science.

It all started on September 25 when boy was making on his way home after school. As the school van passed by a procession carrying Lord Ganesha idols, he "felt a hot air thump on his right ear felt some irritation". "After I came back home and told my father about it he poured some oil in my ear. I went to sleep, but when I got up in the evening, my right ear started delivering plant leaves," said Aman, a student of St. Peter School in Sector 16.

He was rushed to ENT specialist Dr. Praveen Chawla, who was shocked to see assorted pieces of leaves of the plant species such as ashoka, pipal, paan, tulsi and even banana and seeds of vinca rosea plant coming out of Aman's ear.

"I have had the experience of ear and nose producing stones known as otolith and rhynolith respectively, but nothing like this. I immediately examined his eardrums and other parts of his skull. To my shock, the tympanic membrane had had no marking or bruises and redness, no sign of any trauma or any cavity in his ears," Chawla said.

Not convinced, Chawla took the help of diagnostic center Focus Diagnostics and had a CT Scan of the boy done on Friday. However, to his astonishment, Dr. Deepka Gupta, the senior consultant of the diagnostic center, simply said: "The leaves popping out from boy's ear was an 'out of the medical world phenomenon' that he had come across for the first time in his life. Even during the CT Scan, the boy developed irritations in his ear twice but produced a leaf each time."
Aman's father Sahib Singh - a snack vendor and resident of NIT Faridabad, said he was worried about his son who was now developing anxiety and had got tired of making trips to ENT clinics and the diagnostic center.

Dr. Suresh Vashisth, president of Indian Medical Association (Gurgaon) and senior laproscopic surgeon, termed the development as a superstition or a trick. He said: "Medical science does not mention anything of this kind. It is possible that the boy's ears must have a congregation of assorted leaves collected while swimming in a pool or a pond and these were now pouring out." The boy's father, however, said his son did not know how to swim.


Chattanooga Men State They Captured "Bigfoot" on Video


Two Chattanoogans say they may have bagged the mythical "Bigfoot".

Lindsay Lemmon and Austin McGee said after returning from a trip out west, they found that video shot out the window along I-40 in New Mexico has a glimpse of what appears to be a hulking furry figure walking.

Mr. Lemmon, a local contractor who specializes in historic homes, said, "I'm still skeptical, but it does look like a figure to me. If it was a prank, then it was awfully hot and it was out in the middle of nowhere."

Mr. McGee, who shot the footage, is much more positive. He said, "I believe it whole-heartedly. Every time I look at it on the VCR I see a figure with real long arms hanging below the knees. He is walking and swinging those arms."

He said a close examination of the figure reveals "a tan round face."

Mr. Lemmon, who went to Las Vegas for filming of a Discovery Channel show on drag racing, has contacted his CPA and is in the process of getting all rights to the video.

Mr. Austin said he contacted two groups that specialize in Bigfoot lore - one from Atlanta and another from Texas. He said, "They were ready to come to my house right then. They were freaking out. They were trying all sorts of ways to get to see it."

Mr. Lemmon said they plan to release the video after the copyright is in place.

He said they do not want to release the exact location in New Mexico, though they believe they can pinpoint it from a town sign that is earlier in the video. Also, an old abandoned shack is seen near "Bigfoot".

Both men said they did not see the figure while they were passing by that spot in remote New Mexico. Mr. Lemmon was driving and Mr. McGee had the camcorder dangling out the window.


Mr. McGee said his sister noticed the figure when she was looking at what he had shot. She said, "Whoa, what's that?"

Mr. Lemmon said afterwards that Mr. McGee, who works restoring old houses for him, called and exclaimed, "We caught Bigfoot."

A local technician who transferred the video to a DVD said the figure "could be a horse. But when you see it you think immediately of the famous Patterson video of Bigfoot."


Joan of Arc Mystery Revealed

History tells us that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431 and hundreds of documents mention sightings in 1436.

The myth of Joan of Arc, a simple shepherdess who heard God’s calling to save the French crown, has lasted several centuries now but, as it seems, it is far from reality, as two French researchers, Marcel Gay and Roger Senzig, are trying to prove in the book ‘L'Affaire Jeanne d'Arc.’

Even the name of the Maid of Orleans, Jeanne d’Arc, is ‘heresy,’ claims Marcel Gay, a journalist at L’Est Republicain, who has spent more than ten years researching the subject. The authors were granted insight into five of the 19 letters written by her. Three of them are signed ‘Jeanne,’ but none of them reads ‘d’Arc.’

Sightings after her death

Her modest background is also questionable. The supposed shepherdess stated during her trial in Rouen that she ‘never tended sheep or other cattle.’ An excellent equestrian, Joan was well acquainted with the language of the court, which is evident in the written documents mentioned in the book.

The authors were also confused by the circumstances of her death. Even though history teaches us that Joan was burned at the stake in 1431, there are hundreds of documents that say that ‘the Maid of Orleans’ appeared in Metz, Arlon (Belgium), Koeln (Germany) and Orleans even after the year 1436.

- In the 15th century like today, one handled the public opinion. Jeanne d’ Arc, it is secret diplomacy – says Marcel Gay - The legend is beautiful, but the truth is even more.

Psychological warfare

Based on numerous documents that support their thesis, the authors claim that Joan was a ‘psychological’ weapon of the French crown in the war against the English. According to ‘Operation Virgin,’ supposedly conceived by the king’s mother-in-law Yolande d’Anjou, Joan heard voices and became God’s messenger in order to inspire fear in the enemy. The strategy brought the French success in the war.

In the end: Jeanne reportedly got married to Robert des Armoises in 1436, became Jeanne des Armoises, and the Maid was committed to legend. The Joan of Arc myth was revived at the end of the 19th century, when France named her a symbol founder of the Republic after the defeat in 1870. The Church declared her to be a saint in 1920.


Orange Orb Witnessed Over Saanich Peninsula

Unidentified ‘orange orb’ seen above Sidney

Are we alone in the universe?

One Sidney resident always thought he’d wait until the aliens landed before he’d believe in little green men. The man, who routinely pops out to his suburban backyard for an evening cigarette, was surprised when he saw an unidentified flying object.

The UFO was a bright orange orb, which he later described as a jellyfish shape. He briefly wrote the unusual sight off as lights on a plane.

He quickly changed his mind. It was too bright, too orange, and it cruised silently southward over the Sidney sky.

“I would expect a lot of people would have seen it if they looked skyward. It was very conspicuous,” he told the Peninsula News Review. “If it was a prank, it was a really good prank.”

The whole sighting took about three or four minutes he explained, pointing out the path the light cut across the Sidney sky, toward the airport. He quickly snapped off four photographs, but was disappointed with the outcome; the orange blobs against the black night sky shed little light on the origin or makeup of the UFO.

The story gets stranger as the Sidney man wasn’t alone.

He reported the sighting to an online website and shortly thereafter another report came in, also from Sidney.

“We were standing outside in the front of our house and suddenly there was a bright light that came over the trees,” the second witness reported. “I thought it was a plane at first, because it was so low, but there was no sound. It then curved around to the south moving very slowly and seemed to be getting higher and much further away … then it just disappeared.

“We knew it wasn’t a plane, it was moving way too slow. People everywhere were looking up at this thing. I don’t know what I saw, but it was pretty exciting.”

There were clear skies when the bright orange orb was spotted Sunday, Sept. 9, shortly after 9 p.m. with more than 43-kilometre visibility and gentle winds.

The sightings are being investigated by Ufologist Brian Vike, Director of HBCC UFO Research in Houston, B.C.

A ufologist studies unidentified flying object reports, alleged physical evidence, and other related phenomena.

“It’s a little bit weird,” Vike said, noting the speed and shape make the sighting unusual.

“We’ve been getting a lot of this stuff out of the U.K. and that has turned out to be those Thai lanterns,” Vike said. “But this one, I don’t know.”

The BBC reported two years ago that the release of Thai lanterns during a wedding sparked a deluge of UFO sighting reports. Witnesses saw the group of about 30 lights Thursday, Oct. 20, 2005 and described the red blobs as “not airplanes, nor helicopters.”

When investigating an unidentified flying object, Vikes said he begins with astronomy programs online and to confirm that it’s something unusual. Then he contacts local media, police, airports and other contacts.

“It’s basically just sort of run down the list, make calls and hopefully come up with something,” Vike said.

Little has been discovered about the recent sighting over Sidney. Despite the report of “people everywhere” looking up at it, there have been no more reports from eye witnesses. The strange, glowing orange globe also remains to be explained.

About 90 per cent of UFO’s are identified, Vike said, whether it’s weather experiments, military experiments or a host of other explanations.

“But 10 per cent remain unknown because it’s very hard to find information,” Vike said.

So far this year Vike has received about 100 reports of UFO from across B.C.

“That doesn’t include all the other ufologists and there’s lots of them,” Vike said. “They’re coming in from pretty much everywhere.”

Ufologists across Canada have received more than 300 reports. “Then you try to distinguish what is real and what is not,” Vike said.

“It was very bright, brilliant even. It pulsated/flickered/jiggled slightly, the colour was not homogenous or static, it was very much like a glowing orange jellyfish,” the first witness said. “It continued due south over Sidney at an increasing rate of speed and appeared to move south towards Victoria and then south-west and out of sight dimming from view.”

Whether there’s an explanation or not, the Sidney man is glad there was another witness backing up his sighting, and hopes other witnesses will come forward.


Friday, September 28, 2007

NASA Video Confirms Shuttle Witnessed UFO


This is a video from mission control in Houston. No indication of the shuttle flight mission though it is the Discovery shuttle. Crew refers to UFO as "alien spacecraft".


Ghostly Evidence at Haunted Newcastle Theatre

Can you see Kambrook the ghost in this picture?

This is the picture that psychic medium and spirit hunter John Overholt claims proves the existence a ghost haunting Newcastle Repertory Theatre.

According to John you can see the face of a middle-aged man in this picture, a man named Kambrook, who workers say has long haunted the sound and lighting box at the De Vitre St, Lambton theatre.

"He is mischievous but he is a good spirit," Mr Overholt says. "He just loves the theatre."

Newcastle Theatre Company commissioned Mr Overholt to spend a night at the theatre to see if he could produce evidence it was haunted.

He not only found but claims to have photographed Kambrook, and uncovered more than half a dozen spiritual entities that call the theatre home, including one "bad" spirit.


"He is here from a time before this was a theatre," Mr Overholt said. "It has been a church and various other things before it was a theatre, and he is from that time.

"He had a very negative energy, and so we brought our own energy and removed him."

According to Mr Overholt discovered the spirit of an older woman dwelling in the green room, and various other "friendly" ghosts made themselves known to him over the course of the evening.

The findings of Mr Overholt's evening were presented at a fundraising lecture Encounters With the Beyond. He says Hunter hauntings are very common.

"I would say 70 per cent of homes and buildings in this area have spirits within them," he says. "We also have our own personal spirits with us."


Mr Overholt also claims to have felt the presence of a 1233 ghost at the ABC Studios in Newcastle West, a spirit that some who work nights and weekends here believe lurks in the back corridor.

"He is wearing blue overalls, so I don't feel that he was a radio person. He wasn't a journalist or 'on the radio'," Mr Overholt said. "I feel he had some sort of maintenance role."


Thursday, September 27, 2007

Pulsating UFO Observed Over Iran


An unknown multicolored pulsating object was videotaped over Kermanshah, Iran. There was no date other than '2007' given. This object is very similar to those reported seen over western Turkey earlier this summer.


Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Unknown Object Observed Over Phlegrean Islands


Interesting video taken over the Phlegrean Islands (Italy) of Ischia and Procida in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Notice how the object ducks in and out of the clouds. No other text was provided. Will update if more information is available.


Cleveland / Northern Ohio = UFO Hotspot


To suggest that Northeast Ohio could be witness to the next mass UFO sighting does not officially make you a member of the tin-foil hat crowd. If you believe even just a few of the witnesses, Cleveland and its surrounding communities might already be a hotspot.

During the previous two years, the Cleveland UFOlogy Project, considered the oldest of its kind on this side of the globe, has documented 20 credible sightings. The 2005 documentary Dan Akroyd: Unplugged on UFOs highlighted the peculiar lights over Lake Erie near Eastlake, where witnesses reported their latest sighting just this past June. Earlier this year, an "orb" was videotaped over the Key Bank Tower during a peace rally, and the incident made it on the CBS nightly news.

The hype continues: Literally hundreds of thousands have downloaded Internet videos of Northeast Ohio UFOs. The Cleveland Office of Homeland Security has investigated. And one of the Eastlake UFO witnesses says he's signed a contract with a History Channel for a documentary.

"If you take all of the people in Ohio who are interested in this subject, I bet half of them are from that part of the state," says Central Ohio-based William E. Jones, state director for Ohio MUFON, or Mutual UFO Network. "A lot of folks up there have seen things over the years. More people are interested up there. I don't know why."

Sam Phillips has long been a fixture of Cleveland's music scene. He's an accomplished drummer and "hand snapper," and appeared on The Arsenio Hall Show. When interviewed for this story, however, he was homeless and sleeping at the homes of friends and family. Phillips taped a strange light spinning and hovering over the Key Bank Tower on March 10, during a peace rally.

"This is not about me," says Phillips, who admits he has become obsessed with what he saw that night. "There's a pattern here. There's a riddle here. And I want answers. I want an explanation."

He believes it wasn't coincidence the sighting took place over a peace rally. During the sighting, he recalls saying that our "brothers and sisters are going to come down from the universe and humble our ass."

Phillips' story, however, is but a sidebar in the current wave of Northeast Ohio UFO mania. Taking center stage is Lake Erie, and Michael Lee Hill of Eastlake.

Hill, like Phillips, is a musician. In 2001, Grammy-award winner and guitar legend Steve Vai picked Hill as the winner of a national guitar contest. Hill is gregarious, upbeat and likeable. He's unconventional and complex. He's certain that the UFOs he has seen are targeting him.

"I've had contact my whole life," he says. "I remember asking my mother, "Why do Santa's elves keep visiting me?'"

The recent visitations started in earnest five years ago, not far from the coal-burning power plant, he says. While walking on the beach, not far from his home, Hill said he witnessed a top hat-shaped craft hovering and pulsating over the shoreline. This same area is also famous in UFO lore for a 1988 encounter documented by the Coast Guard.

Hill started taking a video camera to the lakefront. Since then he's captured scores of bright lights that appear to hover over Lake Erie. He's uploaded many of his videos to YouTube, and those caught the attention of David Sereda, who directed the Akroyd documentary. Hill created the music for Sereda's latest project, From Here To Andromeda. Hill also says he recently signed a contract for a History Channel project, but the channel did not return Free Times' calls.

"I really do consider myself a spiritual messenger; I know it sounds freaky," says Hill, adding that the UFO filmed over the Key Bank Tower is one of the same orbs he captured over Lake Erie. "There's a huge story unfolding here. I think they're absolutely sending us a message. I believe they are here to help us become a galactic society."

At the other end of the spectrum is Eastlake resident Gary Strauss, who says adamantly, "I'm not one of those UFO people." He's a chemist and a supervisor at a local laboratory. He's lived in his home on the lake since 1984, in the same neighborhood as Hill, though they've never met.

Early on the morning of June 21, Strauss and his son saw four bright lights, shaped like the tip of a Sharpie marker, high above the water. The lights were in a line parallel with the shoreline, positioned at 11 o'clock and 30 degrees above the horizon.

Then one vanished. Then another. Soon all four were gone. Suddenly, they reappeared in the shape of a diamond. Then they went flat again. This went on for more than an hour.

He called the Eastlake police and they dispatched an officer. Strauss remembers the officer saying, "What is that?"

The following day, his son checked the Internet for lights over Lake Erie and found one of Hill's videos. He recalls his son shouting, "That's it! That's what we saw!"

But unlike other Lake Erie witnesses, Strauss doesn't believe the lights are extraterrestrial. He guesses they're the result of government or aerospace industry experiments with new technology. "They're bouncing radar off some type of object," he speculates. "Some form of radar reflection technology. I'm just making an educated guess."

Nevertheless, he's intrigued.

"I look outside a lot more. I want to see it again," says Strauss. "This time, I'm going to have my camera." But he rejects the suggestion that it's anything more than curiosity: "No. I'm not obsessive. Absolutely not."

The Eastlake police actually had two witnesses that night. A detective, who asked not to be named, told the Free Times that he too saw the lights, but from a different vantage point.

The Eastlake police asked the Cleveland office of Homeland Security to look into the sighting, and the detective says he was told later that on the night of the sighting, the Canadian Coast Guard was near the opposite side of the lake searching for a man who had been reported missing. A Canadian Coast Guard helicopter dropped flares, connected to miniature parachutes, over the water. Later it was discovered the man had drowned.

Strauss finds this implausible, believes the lights appeared in a straight line, then vanished, then reappeared in a diamond formation.

The Bush administration reportedly has funneled billions to the aerospace industry to develop space-based weapons under the guise of missile defense. Secret military space-plane programs are believed to have been revived as well.

Another possibility are LAGEOS, or Laser Geodynamics Satellites. Publicly, the government says two are in orbit, and both are roughly the size of a basketball. They are made of brass and partially covered with a retro-reflection material that returns light in the direction it comes from, similar to a road sign.

There's also NASA's Glenn Research Center at the Plum Brook site in Sandusky. The site is home to the world's largest space environment simulation chamber. That chamber will test NASA's new spacecraft, Orion, which will take the US back to the moon. Recent upgrades to the Plum Brook site will also allow it to test "next- generation lunar landers, robotic systems, and military and commercial aircraft," according to NASA's Web site.

"So here I come walking out of the TV station one night in November maybe a decade ago after our early evening newscast," says Ted Henry of New Channel 5. "In perfect formation there were five large objects flying smoothly in my direction. It was stunning.

"What I saw was the undersides of five flat objects flying in exact formation. The front two were enormous, maybe the size of several football fields, and the three trailing were smaller, flying in a slightly irregular pattern."

"What do I think they were? All I can really tell you is what I saw."

Henry has talked about his sighting many times on the air. He puts the experience this way: "One thing is certain, for people who see something in the sky, as I did over Cleveland years ago, it can be a life changing experience.


Satellite Searches Could Spot Bigfoot, Nessie, Etc.

Adventurer Steve Fossett went missing Sept. 3 about 70 miles southeast of Reno, Nevada, in a small plane. He left no flight plan, and searchers have combed tens of thousands of square miles of Nevada and California. After weeks of fruitless searches, and with the survival window closing, Web users were enlisted to help in Fossett's rescue, from the comfort of their own homes.

Using a program called Mechanical Turk, high-resolution satellite imagery of the search area was collected and analyzed. Participants were shown a single satellite image and asked to note any objects or wreckage that could be a plane or its debris.

The search did solve a few mysteries: several previously unknown small plane wrecks—some dating back to the 1950s—were found. Though Fossett and his plane remain missing, the satellite technology used to search for him could theoretically be applied to other types of searches. It may finally verify the existence of large, mysterious creatures reputed to inhabit the globe. Unknown animals such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, for example, might be easily located and captured—if indeed they exist.

While satellites would be of limited use in heavily wooded areas, Bigfoot creatures have been reported in many places with relatively little forest, including Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Texas and Arizona. A single 12-foot Bigfoot may or may not be hard to spot, but a family of them would be easier to find. Furthermore, there cannot be only one Bigfoot; there must be a breeding population of them, by some estimates 6,000 to 10,000 in North America alone. Surely a coordinated, close search of satellite images would reveal dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of Bigfoot in remote areas at any given time.

The search could include bodies of water as well. Many lake monsters and sea serpents are reported to be 50 feet or longer, and surface regularly where they are seen. If armchair investigators are up to the task, they could monitor monster-inhabited lakes such as Scotland's Loch Ness, Canada's Lake Okanagan and America's Lake Champlain using Google Earth technology. Monster buffs don't need to dip their toes into cold lakes or brave the wilderness to search for their quarry; they can scan a dozen square miles over cup of hot coffee at their leisure.

Of course, if such searches are done and still reveal no solid proof of the monsters' existence, few minds will be changed. Diehard believers can always claim that all the monstrous beasts somehow hid undetected or are masters at camouflage. Or the searchers didn't look long enough or in the right places. It only takes one live or dead Bigfoot or lake monster to forever prove that they exist, but no amount of failed searches will ever prove they don't.


Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Dan Aykroyd's Haunted House: "I'm Sure It's Mama Cass"

The 4,800 square foot manse sits on Woodrow Wilson Drive and claims Ringo Starr and Mama Cass as previous celebrity owners. But these days, it is the property of Dan Aykroyd and his wife Donna Dixon who, thanks to other homes in New York, Martha’s Vineyard and Ontario, Canada, have little call for day-to-day L.A. living.

According to blogger The Realestalker, the home is currently available for rent at $30,000 per month and has been going unclaimed at that price for a whopping 450 days. Aykroyd has previously claimed that a ghost occupies the home, and he should know. His brother Peter is said to be a psychic researcher.

“A ghost certainly haunts my house," Aykroyd once told iVillage.com. "It once even crawled into bed with me. The ghost also turns on the Stairmaster and moves jewelry across the dresser. I'm sure it's Mama Cass, because you get the feeling it's a big ghost."

In a way, it makes sense that the ghost of Mama Cass would want to hang out with Elwood Blues. He should be thanking his lucky stars that it is not the ghost of John Belushi that is hanging around the home. The cleaning bill alone might rival $30,000 a month. And quite frankly, given Aykroyd’s recent movie output, a screenplay based on his haunted experiences in the five bedroom, five-and-a-half bath abode with pool could make for his most entertaining vehicle in years. Suggested title: California Screaming.


Fossett Mystery Another Chapter in Nevada Mythology

Alien towns. Lost 19th-century cannons. Lake monsters. Frozen bodies swimming at the bottom of Lake Tahoe. Nevada is a vortex for the unexplained.

And it appears at this writing that we have another whopper of a puzzle to add to the list.

The case of missing aviator Steve Fossett who disappeared from the Flying M Ranch near Yerington Sept. 3 has techno-sleuths, psychics and concerned folks around the world focused on our region.

The attention is natural, and for the same reason we see grown men in suits scribbling out sudoku puzzles in airports -- our race is obsessed with solving problems.

We want to know what happened to this most incredible man who has broken world records and triumphed over fear time and again only to be taken down during a simple day trip.

Fossett’s tale inflates exponentially as the weeks pass without any signs of the famed pilot or his blue and white plane, building upon his already legendary life.

“We like to think that anything is findable with enough resources. But it could turn into another Amelia Earhart situation,” Ric Gillespie told the Associated Press this week.

Government aircraft have searched more than 20,000 square miles around Northern Nevada, followed every lead by air and foot and have found nothing. Family and friends of the famous adventurer have also used state-of-the-art technology and aircraft to scour the land and have come up empty-handed.

And for the first time, Internet users have joined the effort. Tips and satellite coordinates have poured in from all corners of the globe by well-intended people who want answers.

One reader sent me an unusual e-mail message this week. The reader’s psychic friend had a vision of Fossett landing in Walker Lake (her best guess for the water she envisioned). The reader wrote: “She said his plane had a cracked block and he was trying to get back to the ranch when he crashed.”

Like Earhart, Fossett has fans the world over. Many wonder how much the search has cost our government agencies as the constant drone continued overhead for two solid weeks until the Civil Air Patrol ceased air operations on Monday.

Final numbers aren’t in, but it surely pales in comparison to Earhart’s search.

In 1937, when Earhart disappeared, the U.S. government spent $4 million looking for her, making the search the most costly and intensive air and sea operation of its kind in history.

Coincidently, Fossett’s plane could have landed close to the area of another mystery Nevadans have been trying to solve for more than a century -- Union General John C. Fremont’s lost cannon.

Snow was deep over the Carson Pass in January 1844 as Fremont’s group, which included Kit Carson, tried to cross. The 1835-model mountain howitzer they carried proved too cumbersome and they left it behind somewhere near the state line and Bridgeport, Calif.

“They were in the vicinity west of the Walker River,” said Nevada state archivist Guy Rocha. “They just walked away from it.”

The group headed to California and never returned to find it. Along the way, Fremont is believed to be the first white man to view Lake Tahoe. Treasure hunters have looked for the prized cannon without success, using Fremont’s journals as a guide.

“Like buried treasure, people will look for that cannon ‘til kingdom come,” Rocha said.

Other enigma that may never be solved includes Tahoe Tessie, the lake-faring monster that believers say lurks in the icy waters of Lake Tahoe (no matter how much science is thrown at them to disprove this notion).

Another stumper is the business about frozen bodies at the bottom of that same lake in the Sierra. Oceanographer Jacques Cousteau was supposedly frightened right out of his wetsuit during a dive in a sub in the mid-1970s. “The world isn’t ready for what was down there,” he was quoted as saying.

Cousteau did not release photographs from the deep-water trip, adding to the mystery. Many divers have since requested to duplicate the dive.

And, of course, the mother of all mysteries: Area 51. Scientist Bob Lazar who first spilled the beans about working with alien spacecraft at the site in 1989 is now living in New Mexico with his wife, Joy, their dogs and a rescue horse, and reportedly no longer talks about the little green fellows.

I hope by the time this is published, Fossett has been found and this mystery can be put to rest. If not, Nevada will keep his memory alive in its treasure trove of unsolved mysteries.


Monday, September 24, 2007

The Michigan Dogman Film

Statement by Linda Godfrey: Over the 15+ years I've been investigating unknown upright canids, I've seen too many obviously faked photos and unverifiable blob-dogs to count. There is a new film on the block, however, that is the best and most frightening I've seen so far. It is still in the investigative stages and could still be proven a hoax, but if so it's an extremely sophisticated and well done hoax. It was shown to Steve Cook, Michigan deejay who has popularized Michigan's upright canid known as the Michigan Dogman, several months ago. He obtained the rights to the film which was taken with an old 8 mm camera and was allegedly found in an estate sale in the lower Peninsula. Steve has been busy consulting with film and imaging experts, but has posted it now on his Web site. I was fortunate enough to have had a sneak preview at the stills of the film, and while I thought the stills would probably disprove it, I found them more convincing and scary than the film itself.

The film is grainy, blurry, shows a lot of nondescript landscape and begins with some ordinary shots of a lady chopping a log. It appears that the filmmaker saw the creature while riding in a truck, jumped out of the truck to shoot it, then was surprised by a side ambush and ended up with a view of the creature's fangs and gaping maw -- perhaps after the camera was tossed to the ground in haste as the filmer hustled back into the truck. (I think the mouth shots are the least convincing part of the film.) But the first stills that show the creature clearly indicate a canine-headed animal moving through knee-high undergrowth. It has pointed ears on top of its head and shoulders, which ordinary dogs (or bears or other quadrupeds) do not have. It turns and moves to one side, charging through the brush in a way that would be very difficult for a human to do. At one point it appears there is a long tail. There is sure to be a lot of argument on this, and I commend Steve for taking the trouble to acquire it, bring it forward, and to warn everyone that it is still under investigation. It's always better to err on the side of caution with these things, and it may turn out to be some known creature or even a different unknown creature than the Dogman. (It reminds me of the smaller animal known as the Devil Monkey as well). I await the final film analyses with great interest.

Steve Cook's website


'The Biography Channel' Targets Mothman Mystery

POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. - Cameras are in Point Pleasant again to film about that popular red-eyed creature, Mothman.

The Biography Channel, a channel associated with A&E, began filming Wednesday for a new paranormal series that will feature the Mothman documentary as its pilot episode.

Filming will continue throughout the week, and on Saturday, starting in the late morning and continuing through much of the day, Main Street will be shut down. The crew intends to take the present Main Street back in time to 1966 while they film re-enactment scenes.

The street will be lined with vintage cars, and extras will be sporting clothing from the 1960s. Visitors are welcome to watch the filming as long as they do not interfere with the crew and cameras. Visitors also are asked to keep their distance as they watch and move all present-day cars off the street in order to fully transform Main Street to 1966.

Dave Porfiri, series producer, said they chose Mothman for their pilot episode because of its interesting and mysterious story.

“The Mothman is really intriguing to us. It is such a compelling story, especially when you talk face to face with the eye witnesses ... when you put a face with it, it has more of an impact, and that is what we are doing,” Porfiri said. “We are really glad we came here first.”

Porfiri is not new to paranormal documentaries - he has done a tremendous amount of work in dealing with paranormal subjects as well as ghosts.

“I find (paranormal subjects) endlessly fascinating,” he remarked.

In addition, he has done many other documentary television production in travel and historically-based pieces. Aside from the Biography Channel, Porfiri has worked with The Discovery Channel and National Geographic, to name a few.

Porfiri said he was excited for the new, currently unnamed paranormal series, and for the pilot episode, he is trying to make the Mothman legend come alive with a series of re-enactments and discussions with eyewitnesses.

In addition to the Main Street scene Saturday, the crew intends to turn Convention and Visitors Bureau chairman Denny Bellamy's backyard into a 1966 party, which will be a re-enactment of Dottie Campbell's UFO sighting on her street. The party extras also will be decked out in 1960s clothing in order to achieve the full effect of the time period.

Other re-enactments include the car chase that Tom Ury experienced in November 1966. Porfiri said they will be using vintage cars for the scene and will be filming in almost the exact location where Ury was chased, which was right outside the TNT area. A re-enactment of Faye Dewitt's experience, as well as Linda Scarberry's, also are in production plans.

Porfiri mentioned that the majority of actors and extras being used for re-enactment scenes were chosen from a casting call at the Ariel Theatre in Gallipolis.

“We had a great turnout at the casting call, and everyone that showed up was chosen to be an actor or an extra,” he added.

The Biography Channel crew plans to interview other eyewitnesses, such as Dewitt, in addition to Ury and Campbell.

The new series is expected to air in 2008, and in addition to the Mothman episode, Porfiri said the crew plans to do documentaries on other paranormal subjects, such as Bigfoot, UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle. The crew also might return to the area at a later time to film if the show ends up having a host, in which case additional filming with the host will be done.


Sunday, September 23, 2007

Gogomain Swamp Cat Still a Mystery

For more than 30 years, talk of a mystery cat in the Eastern Upper Peninsula has fueled late-night campfires, breakfast-table buffets and the occasional smoke-filled barroom without any real solid proof of its existence.

In fact, the best piece of evidence came in 2001 when a local utility crew happened upon a skull while cutting trees on a parcel of property off of 15 Mile Road. Although it was eventually confirmed that the skull was that of a cougar - or mountain lion, depending on your preference - no other bones were found in a subsequent search, leading to speculation the skull may have been discarded at that location.

There have also been a number of press releases from the Michigan Wildlife Habitat Foundation - a group dedicated to validating the presence of mountain lions in Michigan - claiming to have collected scat, hair and DNA evidence from the central and western Upper Peninsula over the years.

The only real data gathered in our area has come from eye-witness accounts. Reports of a mystery cat have trickled in from a variety of sources, inlcuding: A Rudyard school teacher, a retired reporter for a national broadcasting firm, a former U.S. Air Force Colonel, an Evening News photographer and scads of other respectable, seemingly reliable individuals. Each story carried the same common thread - a quick sighting of a cat-like animal which left lasting impressions and little else in its wake.

But, that all changed with one click of the camera on Tuesday when another credible source, retired Michigan State Police Trooper and Post Commander Dan Inglis of American Legion Post #3 produced the first photographic image of a mountain lion with a trail-cam mounted on his South Fork Camp on the evening of Sept. 18.

“Everything about it looks like a cougar,” said Inglis, showcasing his digital photo on a large screen television.

“It's not a bobcat and it's not a lynx,” said Inglis, who has had experience with these animals. “I hunted bobcats as a kid; I know bobcats and I've seen lynx while up in Canada.”

Inglis said he had photographed his 86-pound black lab at the same location and, using that as a comparison, “this is bigger in every way.” He estimated the cat's weight at 90-100 pounds or more.

While somewhat surprised to catch the animal on his trail-cam, Inglis said he knew something like it was out in the Gogomain Swamp. He first made contact with the animal at a distance of approximately 75 feet during the opening day of deer season four years ago.

“It's just a beautiful animal,” he said describing it as a tannish color, “a Cougar color, with a smooth hide.”

Inglis also added he has seen tracks he could not identify on his property.

“They were too big for a coyote and not big enough for a wolf, but round - it couldn't be either one of them,” he said.

“I think it's great,” said Inglis expressing no concern regarding his discovery.

“It is one of the prettiest animals you will ever see,” he concluded. “ I'd sure rather see that out there than wolves.”


Texas City Haunting Chronicled on TV


If you think of haunted houses as lots of fun, you’ve probably only experienced the annual, local imitations — those yearly efforts intended for charity that offer up harmless screams and preplanned thrills.

The odds are that you didn’t grow up dealing with the living nightmare of your own home being haunted. Darrell Gene Motal is an ordained Texas City minister who says his childhood residence near Blocker Middle School was just such a place: A real haunted house. Motal tells his story in both a book and a TV episode of the Discovery Channel series, “A Haunting.”

The trouble all began, he wrote in his book, “The Witch’s Son,” when his mom, Sandra Waldron, decided to invest herself in the practice of white magic. The book’s summary refers to Motal as “the paranormal preacher” and a “demonologist.” It states that he previously worked at the mysterious Area 51 — an area in southern Nevada at the center of UFO controversy — and then characterizes his mother as someone who sought to “destroy him with all the fury of a woman (whose Wiccan religion Motal) scorned.”

The two disagree on the cause of the manifestations, but not on their reality.

“Supernatural things did occur — things I would have never dreamed possible,” Waldron said of her former home in Texas City. She now lives in Seattle. “Gene feels that my interest in Wicca brought it on. I see things in a different light.”

She described the haunting itself as having the impact of a freight train. She said that she isn’t sure of the cause of the dark clouds, colored orbs and other phantasms that appeared to both her and her son.

“I might have accidentally opened a door,” she said.

Lisa Lacerta, a researcher at New Dominion Pictures, which filmed the “A Haunting” series, said no taping was actually done in Texas City. Instead, the broadcast will feature actors and sets that recreate events from the book. “Spellbound” will also include interviews with both Waldron and Motal.

The two have not screened “Spellbound,” nor seen the script. But Motal said while he expects the TV people to exercise some license with his story, he hopes the vivid essence of his violent experiences will be retained.

Anne Rothwell, series producer for “A Haunting,” said the story would be more about the mother and son than the house itself.

“We chose this story because it deviated from the formula,” she said. “So it is about a woman whose lack of experience with the occult gets her and her son into serious trouble.”

Rothwell also said the show was intended to be as accurate a depiction as possible of the events as Motal and Waldron had related them, within the constraints of a single hour of TV time.


Saturday, September 22, 2007

Are There Thylacines In Victoria?


A private American cryptozoology team plans to visit Portland, Australia in the near future depending on permission by the Victorian government. The team includes several professional researchers who study extinct species, especially marsupials. They are bringing the latest in investigative equipment in order to capture Tasmanian tigers digitally. They also hope to collect physical evidence to prove that thylacines are indeed inhabiting the area.

Portland inhabitant Anthony Ersello said on June 12, 2006 that he observed in an intersection what "looked like a bit of a dog but [...] didn't really look like one." It had a pointed face and stripes, like the presumably extinct thylacines. Ersello attempted to photograph it with his cell phone but was unsuccessful.

Another person, who did not wish to be identified, claimed to have observed thylacines twice during the previous twelve months. This resident of Portland believes that thylacine pups have been seen, and that tigers cross farms on a regular basis.

The team senior staffer stated the possibility that thylacines had been released into Gippsland during the early part of the twentieth century. He cited a Wilsons Promontory 1912 management report.

But there is no confirming documentation that the animals were actually set free there.

The exact date of the expedition has yet to be released.

Here is a 2003 news report: Thyla seen near Melbourne CBD?


Is Peru Meteorite a Signal the World is Coming to an End?


The Russians say the meteorite was a downed US war experiment containing radioative material. Others, including scientists, think the world as we know it will soon come to an end because we are under attack.

Something strange happened in Peru. A fiery object fell from the sky. Stunned residents said they tracked it to a fresh hole in the earth that was more than 60 feet wide, 15 feet deep, filled with boiling water and steaming with noxious fumes.

The local officials confirmed through tests that a “rocky meteorite” created the crater. But meteorite experts all around the world disagree.

Russians are calling it as an American space war experimentation that went out of control. Pu238 is used as a power source for new generation American military satellites, that much is true. And Pu238 can cause water to boil. It also glows. Locals said in the early reports that the crater was glowing.

Water was seen boiling in the crater. Pu238 also causes radiation sickness when it combines with dust and is inhaled. Many local doctors in Peru reported symptoms that sound like radiation sickness.

But something more happened. The crater has started shrinking. That is the strangest thing ever seen. It is not terrestrial technology that creates and shrinks a crater. It does not seem to be an American satellite knocked down by the American space war experimentation as claimed by Pravda.

According to many scientific think-tank, it is an extraterrestrial UFO that has entered the earth’s crust to establish bases below the continental crust. They normally use the ocean. But this is perhaps first time in modern history the UFO has entered the crust in front of all open eyes.

People saw a fiery ball that struck the ground with astonishing speed. Scientific think tanks now say this phenomenon will repeat again and again from now on. The Peruvian mystery crater is the start of new era that can see the end of the world, as we know it between year 2012 and 2030.


Japanese Scientists Create Transparent Frogs


A research team led by professor Masayuki Sumida at Hiroshima University’s Institute for Amphibian Biology has created a type of transparent frog whose internal organs are visible through its skin. The researchers say the see-through frogs can help in the study of diseases and in the development of medical treatments by allowing laboratory scientists to check the status of internal organs and blood vessels while the frogs are alive and without having to dissect them.

According to Sumida, the transparent frog is the result of breeding two specimens of Japanese brown frog (Rana japonica) that had a genetic mutation giving them pale skin. By selectively breeding their offspring, the researchers were able to create a frog that remains transparent for its entire life cycle. Most of the world’s known transparent creatures live underwater, and transparent four-legged animals are extremely rare.

The researchers also say that by fusing the genes of fluorescent proteins to the frog’s genes, they can create frogs that glow. Glowing frogs can help scientists study specific “problem” genes by providing a real-time visual indication (i.e. the frogs glow) when those genes become active.

Professor Sumida says, “Transparent frogs will prove useful as laboratory animals because they make it easier and cheaper to observe the development and progress of cancer, the growth and aging of internal organs, and the effects of chemicals on organs.”

The results of the research will be announced at a meeting of the Zoological Society of Japan on September 22.


Montana Wolf Mystery Revived, Officials Snare Second Hybrid Wolf

A mystery predator responsible for 12 sheep deaths in Eastern Montana last month could be connected to the dozens of similar attacks in late 2005 and early 2006, which some officials blame on a domestic hybrid species of wolf.

Montana’s top wolf official said this week that two suspicious animals remain on the loose in and near Garfield County following the sheep deaths in late August. A third animal killed in a coyote snare earlier this month has yet to be positively identified as wild or domestic.

“It’s a young female, charcoal gray in color,” said Carolyn Sime, wolf coordinator for Fish, Wildlife and Parks. “It looks like something we would see in the Northern Rockies, but I’ve also seen domestic wolves that look the same. It’s unclear what the origin is.”

The recent deaths revive last year’s furor in McCone and Garfield Counties over the 100-plus sheep slaughtered, and the subsequent hunt that ultimately left dead a domestic wolf, the product, officials believe, of manipulated breeding in captivity.

More than that, the frustration of stockmen, as Hal Herring wrote last year for NewWest.Net, was “not entirely directed at the creature itself (the stockmen here know full well how to handle that problem) but at the federal and state governments, at complex regulations imposed to protect an animal that they despise, and at a far-away society that seems to have lost all respect for them and their constant struggle to remain self-reliant, solvent, and on the land.” (Click here for the first installment of Hal’s March 2006 story, here for the second.)

Sime said the dead wolf does not match the description of either animal spotted by USDA wildlife service officials on August 22 as they searched for the predators from an airplane. One of those animals was brown, the other was gray. Both were spotted within two miles of the most recent sheep attacks near Jordan.

“The brown color is a flyer that something is not right,” said Sime. “The one last year was brown as well.”

Officials authorized the USDA to kill both of the spotted wolves, but ended up catching the third unidentified wolf species instead. Sime said it’s possible that one or both of the wolves that remain on the loose are domestic. “It’s unusual for wolves to disperse as groups,” she said. “It could be a combination of captive and wild animals.”

Sime said wolf sightings of the last month could be an extension of events from late 2005 and early 2006, but admitted that the agency remains somewhat baffled by the new case. There have been no sightings in vicinity of Jordan since Labor Day weekend.

And the mystery of the Creature of McCone County continues.


Friday, September 21, 2007

Spectre of Girl Caught on Video in Colombia


A group investigating reports of paranormal activity at a public park in Cúcuta, Colombia captured on video an apparition of a girl moving through the park. The girl is said to have been in her early teens and believed to have died near the area many years ago. The story aired on Colombian TV Network RCN on 6/26/07.


For Rent: The Haunted Castle of Oldenburg Princess

The right for long-term rent of Castle of Oldenburg Princess of the 19th century – one of the main sightseeing sites of the Voronezh Region of Russia – has been put out for tender.

According to psychics and ufologists, the Castle of Oldenburg Princess is not only a sightseeing site but also an anomalous zone with strong paranormal activity: it is known that here people often fall down in a faint; rats, mice, and flies do not dwell in the castle, and besides, tourists mark sudden and frequent camera breakages.

In 1879 this estate near the Russian city of Voronezh was a wedding present of the emperor Alexander II to granddaughter of Nicolas I Grand Duchess Eugenya Romanova (married name Oldenburg). The Princess used to visit the castle very often.

After 1917 the castle’s owner migrated to France. The new Russian authorities used the building as a school, then as hospital and library. 30 years ago the building was admitted to be no longer suitable for exploitation.

Now the region’s administration hopes that a new investor will restore the castle and the nearby park and make it the main sightseeing of the Voronezh Region.

Earlier the press wrote that Prince Michael of Kent (great grandson of the Russian Tsar Alexander II) wanted to purchase the castle while being on their visit to Voronezh in spring 2007. However, Prince was refused as the local authorities explained that the castle was registered as federal property and therefore could not be sold.


'Superman' Seen In The Skies Of Romania!

Police are investigating after villagers in Romania claimed to see a Superman-like figure flying through the sky. Almost 20 villagers, from Gemeni, Mehedinti county, claim the UFO was wearing a shiny blue suit, just like Superman’s. Police officers took written statements from all of the witnesses and say they described the figure in the same way.

Local policeman Ion Anuta said: “We talked to people of different ages who are all reliable citizens in our village. They all said they saw this strange creature who flew over their houses in his shiny blue costume. We’ll just have to see what happens next.”

Villager Constantin Toader, 41, said: “He looked like Superman and was flying slowly at about 100 yards from the ground in a standing position. He didn’t make any smoke or sound. Just cruising around.”


Cigar Shaped UFO Filmed Over Oahu


Earlier this year Hawaii residents and surfers saw a cigar shaped object that looked like "two little fireballs" over Kewalo Basin and Ala Moana Beach Park on Oahu's South Shore. Both the National Weather Service and the FAA could not explain away the sighting, which is when many locals began speculating about the origin of the object. Aliens? Spaceships?

Hawaii scientists appear to think a simple contrail is the most plausible explanation. Since the air is very cold at high altitudes, as a jetliner flies by the water left behind condenses and these drops stay behind the craft for quite some time before they evaporate, forming what looks a lot like a stream of smoke or fire. Furthermore, the Hawaii professor who explained away this incident took a back handed slap at UFO enthusiasts saying:

Some people just think differently from scientists and they like to look for the fanciest, most exciting explanation. Those people like to think this is little green men. I think that is very unlikely.

Apparently this isn't the first time Oahu has been visited by this mysterious visual. You can always head to Kewalo Basin at sunset yourself and hope to catch a glimpse with your own eyes. But bring your surfboard, that way even if you don't see the object in question you can at least hit the swell.


Thursday, September 20, 2007

Amazing Flying Disk Filmed Over Southern California



Disk shaped UFO with rotating and flashing colored lights filmed over Southern California.


New UFO Video Over Lake Erie

Michael Lee Hill has posted new UFO video, shot over Lake Erie and similar to his initial video which has been seen on Fox News, CBS and several major paranormal websites. Hill's previous video has also appeared in UFO's Unplugged with Dan Aykroyd and David Sereda's film "From Here to Andromeda".

Flashing orbs over Lake Erie 9-18-2007
The first video is probably the best of the four.






'Best Of Bigfoot' Compilation With Dr. Jane Goodall




Family Claims Thornton Close Home is Haunted

A mum and her daughter are set to be moved by a housing trust after claiming they are being terrorised by spooks in their home.

Mum-of-three Veronica Loosemore and her youngest daughter, Zoe, 12, from Thornton Close, Horley, say they are plagued by sinister shadows and eerie images on the walls.

Veronica said: "I see wolves, monks and a woman's face with lots of make-up and a disgusting grin. She appears on the living room wall and at the kitchen window, and there's always weird shadows in the flat."

The 55-year-old, who has lived in the 1970s-built ground floor flat for two years, added: "The living room clock has no batteries in it, but the other night it started to tick and the pendulum was swinging violently from side to side."

The petrified pair contacted the Raven Housing Trust after paper crucifixes on the walls proved no defence from the spectral sightings.

A vicar's blessing also failed to reassure them and they have been staying with her middle daughter Laura, 22, in Langshott, Horley, until a new home can be found.

Sue Young, Horley neighbourhood manager for the housing trust, said: "The family are now quite high up on our transfer list and Mrs Loosemore left our office in high spirits saying she was off to see a Catholic priest.

"We have people coming to us with all sorts of reasons why they want to move,but this was a first for me.

"The whole block was built in 1970 and the previous tenant was there for 22 years without any problems like this."

The family have been so scared by the supernatural spate that they enlisted the help of the Rev Steve Davie, of St Bartholomew's Church, Horley, who is sympathetic to the family's concerns.

He said: "I went to their flat last week to pray with them.

"They're not sensationalist people and it's obvious they are very distressed and are living in some degree of fear.

"I don't think this is an attempt to pervert the housing system. These people are genuinely afraid."

The family have also had psychics and mediums visit since their troubles started in efforts to expel the evil spirits.

Laura said: "When the woman came to visit she told us she had exorcised three spirits from the flat, but there are still strange shadows that appear on the walls.

"I was always a total sceptic before this all happened.

"I know it sounds crazy, but I'm convinced there's something not-of-this-world happening inside the flat."


Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Does Photo Reveal a Ghost?

A supernatural investigator says he is convinced the man in this spooky photograph is the ghost of a Croydon butcher who died years before the picture was taken.

According to paranormal enthusiast Malcolm Robinson, the image turned up in a roll of film developed after a house party in Tamworth Road in either October 1979 or October 1980.

The man in the picture was the only guest' the hostess did not recognise and, after showing it to a neighbour, she is said to have discovered the image was of a dead butcher who had previously lived in the house.

Malcolm, who founded Strange Phenomena Investigations, has been looking into the picture's origins since he was given it in August.

He said: "It wasn't until the lady got the photographs developed that she realised she didn't know who the person in the photograph was. The whole spool had been taken in the house, so it wasn't a photograph from an earlier day.

"She showed the photograph to numerous people who had been at the party, and not one of them recognised this chap. It wasn't until the lady showed the photograph to her next door neighbour, that he remarked, Oh that's old Norman Smithenbottom, he's been dead for years'.

"The elderly gentleman said he used to be a local butcher who had previously lived in her house."

The address where the picture is alleged to have been taken - 83 Tamworth Road - has since been demolished to make way for the Centrale development.

It was formerly a six-storey Victorian house which had old servant bells downstairs and horse stables at the back.

Malcolm added: "I've been doing this sort of thing for 25 years and you get to know when people are trying to pull the wool over your eyes. I'm convinced of her sincerity.

"We know his name is Norman Smithenbottom and that he was a butcher, but not much else. We would like to ask your readers - particularly your older readers - if they have any information."


Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Actual Debris From Roswell Crash Site


Video on actual debris from the Roswell spacecraft that crash landed in 1947.


Peru Meteorite 'Causes Mystery Illness'


A meteorite has struck a remote part of Peru and carved a large crater that is emitting noxious odours and making villagers ill, according to local press reports.

A fireball streaked across the Andean sky late on Saturday night and crashed into a field near Carancas, a sparsely populated highland wilderness near Lake Titicaca on the border with Bolivia, witnesses said.

The orange streak and loud bang were initially thought to be a plane crashing. When farmers went to investigate, however, they found a crater at least 10m wide and 5m deep, but no sign of wreckage

The soil around the hole appeared to be scorched and there was a "strange odour", a local health department official, Jorge López, told Peru's RPP radio.
Later the farmers complained of headaches and vomiting. Police who went to investigate the crater were also stricken with nausea, prompting authorities to dispatch a medical team that reached the site today.

"The odour is strong and it's affecting nearby communities. There are 500 families close by and they have had symptoms of nausea, vomiting, digestive problems and general sickness," said Mr López.

At least 12 people were treated in addition to seven police officers who required oxygen masks and rehydration.

The farmers expressed fears that what appeared to be chunks of lead and silver around the site could contaminate the soil.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Modesto Montoya, told the state press agency that a fallen meteorite did not present any danger unless it hit some structure on impact.

"None of the meteorites that fall in Peru and make perforations of varied sizes are harmful for people, unless they fall on a house," he said. Another meteorite fell to Earth in Arequipa province in June.


UFO Mystery in Cadillac, Michigan

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Or, is it from another world.

Whether or not the “disk-shape” and “slender rectangular” objects in Dave Dunford’s photos are UFOs, they sure are strange.

“I can’t say they’re being piloted by little green men, but they’re UFOs,” said Dunford of Cadillac. “I saw what I saw — they’re unidentified, they’re flying and they’re objects.”

The sighting

Dunford was photographing the Cadillac sky on Aug. 27 at about 8:30 p.m. near his residence in Pheasant Ridge. The self-proclaimed amateur photographer was taking pictures of planes and the clear blue sky for his self described “deviant art” Web site — and that’s when he had his first sighting.

“When I brought my camera down, I noticed something strange and silvery in the sky,” he said. “There had been several planes in the air, and all had vapor trails. This one had no vapor trail and, unlike the planes, it made no sound. … It also wasn’t a blimp because there was no platform for people to stand on.”

Dunford quickly shot a few frames of the silver object and ran inside his home to tell his family to come outside. He was in-and-out of his house in less than 10 seconds, but when he returned outdoors, the object was out of sight, he said.

A little disappointed, Dunford downloaded the pictures to his computer to see what his digital photos would reveal.

“I didn’t get as clear of shots as I wanted to, but you could definitely see the object and tell it wasn’t a plane or blimp,” he said of his zoomed-in photos.

Dunford’s finger then slipped on the touchpad of his laptop, and he was “shocked” to discover “three dark objects” in the sky above the silver UFO.

These three dark objects were not visible to Dunford when he was outside, but his 4.0 megapixel camera picked up the images and he was able to see them in an enlarged photo.

“The three dark objects do not appear in any of the other pictures, even though the shots were all within about a minute of one another,” he said, noting that the objects must have been in motion.

After sharing his photos with some relatives, Dunford’s anonymous relative decided to zoom-in on some of her own pictures, which were taken near Mitchell Street in July 2006. Dunford calls the dark, disk-shaped object in his relative’s photos, “one of the best pictures of a UFO that I’ve ever seen — it’s just amazing.”

According to Dunford, he considers all other rational options before deciding that the objects are UFOs.

“I try to debunk my own beliefs before I say anything about it,” he said. “Before I say anything, I’ll do anything to make sure it’s something to look into.”

Dunford said he’s taken numerous photos of planes and birds, so he knows what to look for in a picture when trying to identify an object in a photo. He’s also said he’s taken pictures with dust on his camera, so he knows what dust looks like compared to UFOs. And in the zoomed-in photos, he looks for 3-dimensional objects, light reflecting off the surface, shadows being cast, a differentiation in color and a “halo” glow in order to deem the images possible UFOs.

If you wonder why you’ve never seen a UFO, Dunford would simply tell you, “You probably have.”

“I see (UFOs) because I look,” he said, noting that most people don’t notice the world around them. “Most peoples’ minds want to make associations with things that they already know about. The subconscious doesn’t like to think outside the box and will try and put it (objects) into something rational — like it could be a plane, blimp or bird. … I had to look at it (objects) and think, ‘Wait a minute.’ It took a conscious effort to say, ‘That’s not what I think it is.’”

The expert’s opinion

Cadillac News submitted four of what Dunford thought were the best photos to National UFO Reporting Center’s Web site in order to get another opinion on whether the objects in Dunford’s pictures are UFOs. Two of the four photos that were the least blurry were published with this article.

Peter Davenport, director of National UFO Reporting center said he inspected the four photos, and said, “none of them, in my opinion, is a photo of a genuine UFO.”

“Despite the photographer’s apparent belief that he has ‘UFO’s’ on film, I don’t think the data provided allow a serious-minded investigator to make that conclusion,” said Davenport, who is more focused on UFOs in terms of alien aircraft.

Davenport said the photo taken near Mitchell Street “clearly is a bird … with its wings extended.” In the photo of a silver, shiny object, Davenport said it’s not a genuine UFO craft from another world and noted “it’s blurry, it’s too far away in distance, and it’s indistinct.” He also stated that Dunford’s photo of “three dark objects” is too blurry to gather enough information to determine that they are alien aircraft.

Noting that photos of genuine alien craft are “extremely rare,” Davenport estimated that one out of every 1,000 photos sent to his center is a genuine UFO photo.

“I have seen probably not more that half a dozen (photos of genuine UFOs) in the 13 years that I have served as director of the National UFO Reporting Center,” he said.

While there is no one test for deciding whether an object is a UFO, Davenport holds strong to his belief that the Dunford’s photographs are not genuine UFOs.

“There’s no test that is definitive,” he said. “I cannot certify that they are not UFOs … but in the final analysis I assume they are not.”

Airport and police report

In some of Dunford’s photographs — whether they were UFOs or not — there were clearly objects in the sky.

If the objects were planes, John Jenkins, airport attendant at Wexford County Airport, said it could simply be the case that planes were in the air, but weren’t logged on Aug. 27; he also noted that no UFOs were reported on that date.

The only thing Cadillac’s airport would’ve tracked is if a plane had radioed the airport or if a plane landed at the airport and checked-in, Jenkins said. Pilots are not required to check-in at the Cadillac airport, and if it was after 5 p.m., there are no employees there to witness whether a pilot had landed and checked-in their plane, Jenkins added.

The operations manager of Minneapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center, whose traffic control center supervises Wexford County Airport, also said nobody at his station remembers anything about planes or UFOs being logged on that day; normally pilots won’t log anything “because it’s paper, and he’s not required to,” he said.

Elizabeth Cory, spokeswoman for Federal Aviation Administration, said there haven’t been any recent unusual sightings near the Cadillac area. But with 6,000 planes flying over the U.S. at a given time, she said the sky gets pretty congested.

“There’s going to be aircraft at any given time flying over your (Cadillac’s) area, and they’re not always logged,” said Cory, referring to the notion that the objects may simply be planes that haven’t been logged.

And according to Jenkins, the silver, shiny rectangular object Dunford saw could’ve been a low-flying plane.

Planes that fly at very high altitudes will leave vapor trails because the air is colder at higher elevations and the exhaust from the plane is hot, which creates the vapor trail, Jenkins said. However, if a plane is flying closer to the earth, the plane may not have a vapor trail, because the air temperature is warmer. Jenkins also added, “it’s not unusual for a plane not to make a lot of noise.”

Wexford County Sheriff Gary Finstrom said there were no reports regarding UFO sightings in Cadillac’s area on Aug. 27; Finstrom also has been an officer for 30 years and does not recall any reports of UFO sightings in the area. Michigan State Police Sgt. Sergeant Michael Salasky also said he didn’t receive any reports regarding sightings on Aug. 27; Salasky also has no knowledge of reported UFO sightings while he’s been in office for the past 20 years.

If there are aliens manning saucers in Cadillac’s sky, it seems they’re just like their buddy E.T. and want to go home, because police and traffic control centers in our area have not recently logged any UFO sightings.

But while there may not be any official documents of UFOs in our area, National UFO Reporting Center’s Web site shows there has been 1,080 reported sightings in Michigan to this date. With a total of 1,080 reported sightings, Michigan is currently ranked No. 10 out of a total of 69 states and provinces in North America. According to the Web site there have been nine sightings in the greater Cadillac area; the most recent sighting in our area was in Evart on approximately Aug. 27, 2006 at 1 a.m. two miles from M-115 on M-66 northeast of Evart. The report detailed a person witnessing an object that looked like a satellite, which turned very bright then went out of sight.

If any aliens are reading this, Dunford has a message for you.

“Come closer, I want a better shot of you!” he said.


Czech Crash Victim Wakes Up Speaking English

A Czech speedway driver knocked unconscious in a crash stunned ambulance drivers when he woke up speaking perfect English.

18-year-old Matej Kus was out cold for 45 minutes after the crash, but when he woke up he conversed fluidly in English with paramedics, even speaking in an English accent.

The teenager had just begun to study the language and his skills were described by friends and team-mates as “basic at best”.

Peter Waite, the promoter for Kus's team, the Berwick Bandits, told the Daily Mail: "I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"It was in a really clear English accent, no dialect or anything. Whatever happened in the crash must have rearranged things in his head.

"Before his crash Matej's use of the English language was broken, to put it mildly.

"He was only just making a start on improving it and struggled to be understood, but was keen to learn.

"Yet here we were at the ambulance door listening to Matej talking to the medical staff in perfect English.

"Matej didn't have a clue who or where he was when he came round. He didn't even know he was Czech.

"It was unbelievable to hear him talk in unbroken English."

Unfortunately, the speedway driver's new found skills didn’t last and he remembers nothing of the accident or the following two days. He is now keen pursue studies in English.

He told the Daily Mail, through an interpreter: "It's unbelievable that I was speaking English like that, especially without an accent.

"Hopefully I can pick English up over the winter for the start of next season so I'll be able to speak it without someone having to hit me over the head first.

"There must be plenty of the English language in my subconscious so hopefully I'll be able to pick it up quickly next time."


Monday, September 17, 2007

Pterodactyl: Eyewitness Account


In 1944, in (Papua) New Guinea, Duane Hodgkinson and his friend saw a "pterodactyl" with a wingspan similar to a Piper Tri-Pacer (29 feet).


Ghost Hunters Search Library For 'Miss Elizabeth'

Most people go to the library for a book; others go for a spook.

A group of six "paranormal investigators" visited the Hall County Library after hours on Friday to make contact with its ghost-in-residence. The group, which calls itself The Paranormal Science Investigations Network, travels around the area on the weekends looking to make contact with those on the "other side."

They came to the library after one of the investigators, Sherri Scaniffe, had heard about the Hall County Library ghost on the Internet.

Gail Hogan, who has worked at the library since 1990, said she's become friendly with the library ghost and calls her "Miss Elizabeth." Hogan said she greets the ghost in the morning, and says "Miss Elizabeth" has been known to turn the water back on after employees have finished washing their hands, and that she likes to play with the lights.

"I think she has a sense of humor," Hogan said.

About 7:30 p.m., the investigators arrived at the library with their equipment -- a few digital recorders, digital cameras, motion detectors and Trifield meters (meters that detect changes in electromagnetic fields) -- and set up shop.

They split up into two groups: One went upstairs and the other stayed downstairs.

Each group followed a similar procedure.

After walking through the library, the investigators went to the spots where they said they sensed paranormal activity and conducted EVP (electronic voice phenomena) sessions. In the EVP sessions, all the investigators would turn on their recorders and one person would ask questions like "What's your name?" "How old are you?" and "Are you married?", hoping for a response.

When the group did not get any concrete evidence of the ghost's presence, they moved on to another location. Dusty Ellison, one of the investigators, took pictures with his digital camera in hopes that maybe the library ghost would show up in some of the pictures.

Ellison said that sometimes the camera would pick up orbs of light that some people explain as balls of energy. Others explain the orbs of light as particles of dust that the camera's flash caught, or flying insects.

As Hogan and two of the investigators, Michelle Babiarz and Ellison, were trying to summon the ghost in the upstairs portion of the library, a hallway light turned off and immediately came back on a couple of minutes after Hogan requested that "Miss Elizabeth" turn on a light.

Hogan said the light was set on a timer to turn off, but not to come back on.

Babiarz, a co-founder of The Paranormal Science Investigations Network, said that her first instinct is to try and explain any seemingly "paranormal" activity with something concrete and rational, such as looking for a creaking fan to explain a noise.

"We're all skeptics," Babiarz said. "That's our job."

With or without their skepticism, nobody could explain the two fallen books on the floor in the children's reading area. One of them, "The Serpent Slayer," lay about three feet from its place on the shelf. No one had remembered seeing it in the earlier walk-throughs of the building.

The group wrapped up at the library around 11 p.m., but that's not the end of the investigation of the library ghost. They will review their recordings for voices and sounds, electric voice phenomena that may have been there but were not audible at the time.

For now, though, the Hall County Library's unexplained "visitor" will stay that way.


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